Switzerland yesterday indicated it would destroy uranium enrichment and nuclear-weapon design documents obtained from a Swiss engineer with suspected links to an international nuclear proliferation network, Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 26).
(Jun. 25) -
Swiss engineer Urs Tinner is suspected of supporting the nuclear network that provided nuclear equipment to Libya and other nations. Tripoli would later turn over uranium enrichment centrifuges to the United States (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration photo).
The Swiss government accepted the International Atomic Energy Agency's determination that the documents seized from Urs Tinner were a possible danger, according to a statement on Switzerland's official Web site. As a non-nuclear weapon state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Switzerland is barred from possessing protected information on the production of nuclear weapons.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog gave Switzerland the option of destroying the documents or transferring them to any of the five nuclear powers recognized under the treaty: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
"The IAEA estimates nevertheless that the destruction of these documents is the surest solution to preventing this information from falling into bad hands," says the Swiss release. "For reasons of sovereignty and in order to satisfy the requirements of security policy, the Federal Council chose this last solution" (Laura MacInnis, Reuters, June 25).
Switzerland plans to promptly destroy roughly 100 pages of nuclear-weapon design details to keep them from falling into "the wrong hands," the Associated Press reported. Some papers, including documents on uranium enrichment, would be held at a guarded site and provided on a limited basis to prosecutors, court officials and defense attorneys. That information would also be destroyed at the conclusion of the cases against Tinner family members suspected of providing expertise and equipment to the nuclear smuggling ring once run by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Prosecutor Andreas Mueller commended the decision to make some of the sensitive information available, noting that Switzerland's destruction of some documents last year had already created hurdles for investigators attempting to build a case against the Tinners (see GSN, May 21, 2008; Bradley Klapper, Associated Press/Google News, June 24).